the.com/outback
Australia's vast empty middle, where the GPS shrugs and hands you to the stars.
means The remote, sparsely populated interior of Australia, far from the coastal cities where most people live.
from Simply 'out' plus 'back' — a straightforward 19th-century Australian compound describing land lying 'out' beyond the settled areas and 'back' from the coast or a town. No exotic roots here: settlers used 'back country' and 'back blocks' the same way, and 'outback' won out as the word for the continent's dry, vast, thinly peopled center.
- size
- covers over 70 percent of Australia's landmass
- population density
- fewer than one person per square kilometer
- road trains
- trucks up to 53 meters long haul supplies
- school
- many kids attend via two-way radio or satellite